the beauty in perception

Meaning

​I wake to the world of reality. I wake to the sunlight which stretches across my room, filling it white, white and receptivity. I feel my body, this heavy thing always part and parcel of me. I reach for electronics which propel me into a smaller multidimensional space. My eyes water and irritate me. My hairs separate from my head and fall on my face to tickle me. The feeling of my skin against my skin is close and done brilliantly. I contemplate that all molecules are mostly empty and therefore all that I feel and see is mostly empty. I interpret my dreams vaguely. I write them out carefully. I inscribe every detail and publish it to the world, hoping somebody recognizes me. I am lonely. It is not always a painful feeling. It’s something that feels like sand against your skin, it can be welcome, just as it can be itchy. I think of her and this brand newly awoken me thinks of her fondly, distantly, unpainfully. And then I think, where will I be in this grand scheme of things, when I die, and the world collects me? I will have done nothing with no one to remember me. I will be elusive, like smoke, transitional and chaotically ephemeral. No one will think of me, no but some will think ill of me before they forget me. This thought usually fills me with self loathing but I am new to this day and I am filled with allowance. It doesn’t hurt me. I merely wish it were different. I wish life better fitted me. Yes that is it, it feel like this suit called life is the wrong size and shape and sags on me. It is also the wrong fashion and material and it’s like playing dress up in costume which consumes me. Yes life is vivid and externally tactile, enjoyable physically. But it feels wrong to me, in the sense that nothing is wrong but something else is meant to be. And I’m sorry, very sorry, if you misunderstand me. I am only telling you what I sense and see and feel and expect. Yes this life exists and what is mean to be is something I expect but do not see. What does this mean? What could it be.
Waking is an odd thing.

My thoughts create
and I am unmade and lost in them
for they consume me,
mountains pile on me stretching into infinity
for every want ever desired and not,
every decision done and discarded,
every possibility sits upon me,
weightless until the weight of all of them crush me
slowly in the illusion of their reality.

And I am unmade and become them,
so buried beneath myself created ideations
I am relegated to ideation itself,
and my thoughts create more of me,
all in aid of trying to find me.

And thus I am unmade.

Light, however, glimmers periodically.

The people I created with thought
walk and talk
with will of their own,
as if their holographic construction
evolved into actual sentience,
and I interact until I perceive them as the reality.

And then I love and hate them,
worry and coddle them,
feel the persecution of them,
until I am buffed by their own thought forms
and I am further unmade.

Then light gleams, a single clear ray.

I fall in love,
and she is so bright
inside my closed eyes,

the lightness fills my soul
and it shines out my chest,
between my breasts,
and I am momentarily whole.
For a moment I am
unburdened
by the infinite mountain
of thought debris.

And I shine,
and I glow,
and I absolutely expand
into a feeling of airiness.
I feel as if I were light and air. For a moment.

For a moment.

She is there,
just not here,
here she is dense, a creation,
and one that hurts even as it
brightens me, inspires me.
She looks like a creation of this world,
and I see her with open eyes
And thorny flaws
and skin so precious a color I want to weep at the sight of it
for it is so precious to me.

I enjoy her smile,
bask in the light it throws,
and I revel in each and every
gentle gesture she makes
towards me.

And I am undone. I unravel,
I literally unwind all the ropes of
pain and anguish
each infinite whim and thought
conjured to bind me,
and it feels like falling,
but I am mere whittled away,
for a moment at a time,
into what I was,
until my creation overpowered me.

And that is how you see heaven I think,
see past the illusion,
see beyond your own minds expression,
and glimpse the other side.
Glimpse the next realm,
another reality, the other world.
The other’s world.

I felt God when I I looked upon her,
eyes wide open and tightly shut, and. . .

. . . And I think for a moment she saw me,
from her own world,
from beneath her own infinite mountain,
from her own living grave, I think she saw me.

And I was with her in some timeless place for a time.
Until we let the thought forms
back in and they distracted us
into separation.

The world is whitewashed
beneath the paint and
peeling paper and
splattered beginnings,
heeded endings.
The world is empty
and I mask the emptiness
with imagination painted like
so much acrylic scree
stuck to the thing.

And the people are just people,
extensions of me only
as they are mine mind
come to life.

Until I saw one and chose to see,
loved one and chose to disclose.
Until I opened my eyes to
the illusion of the mountain,
so infinite
and heavy
and imaginary.

Of late I have been oriented to the near after now, the future, the immediate comings which my mind turns towards like a flower facing the sun.

However, the future is not the sun, the future is not a definite thing, it doesn’t have weight or pull as does the now. The now is a physical thing, tangible, you can touch it, feel the weight of everything pulling you into this immediate existence. The future, not so much. The future remains a hazy thing, a probability in the mind, an idea. It remains so airy an ideal, it cannot be said to ever even manifest.

We cannot put into imagination enough detail to ever create and know the future.

After all, do you imagine every grain of sand on the path you will walk tomorrow? Do you know exactly which time every breath you take will escape? These things are the future, these things aren’t real. These things will never happen, for you can’t predict you every step tomorrow and what it will effect. You can’t predict every breath, the inhalation and exhalation remain, while a probability, not easily determined. What random occurrence could make you breath faster? Or cease breathing all together. Will you blow out a candle tomorrow sending millions of dust motes into the other end of the room, with your essence and bio material upon them. And what will they do, these dust motes and bio-material? Are you sure you can predict the future? Are you sure you know what will happen? Do you even know if there will be a tomorrow?

You don’t. It is possible the future doesn’t even exist in this physically manifested world. It is possible the future doesn’t even exist until it happens, as a physically manifested thing. It is highly likely the past is just your active imagination parading about with a grin having convinced you of its actuality when in reality it was all just a dream too. It is possible the only thing which is physical, tangible, and whole is the very ground on which you stand right now, the wind which blows your hair, the keyboard your fingers type on. It is so possible that you only exist as a physical thing right now that to orient yourself to a future, or past, happening is a denial of what you are right now. This is why we worry these events.

Imagine the last birthday you enjoyed. Imagine the cake you ate, the people you saw, the gifts you received. For my last birthday I ate a vegan cheesecake made of cashews and dates. I still recall the way the texture of the cashew filling filled my palette. The way it was heavy on my taste-buds, addictive, and was eager to go down and I was eager to swallow. I recall eating it frozen, because it wasn’t hard enough just chilled. I recall hoarding it to myself, and not sharing. It was that good. The cashews were so sweet, nutty, earthy, like the color of it, and I was in love with the entire thing. I had made it myself, so it was myself eating my own energy. It was lovely.

It was also the past. I just took you there, in your head. I just took us both there for now I taste the cashew cheesecake in my memory, in my head, my mouth waters in reaction, but it is just reaction. It is just a physical anticipation of the past. A focusing on what has already gone by. It can no longer be a physical thing, it now only exists in the mind. And I can sort of feel my mind wanting to push it to the future, go make another cheesecake, which orients the mind and tongue and anticipation to the next event, and absolutely ducking the now which is the only one of the three which is physical and can be physically enjoyed.

Do you see it now? The now is the only thing which holds weight. The only thing which can be savored and enjoyed in a tangible way. You can only hold your lover now. You can only touch your cheek now. It is only soft right now. The rest is illusion, imagination, memory, a product of the brilliant mind.

I recently meditated on why I have no money. It was an annoying thing in my existence this lack of money. The idea to meditate on it was born of the frustration how I want these things I want so badly, but have no money to go out and buy them. I turned on music and fell into a sitting meditation, which became so still I was like wood. It wasn’t like stone for there was breath, but my attention became so focused on what was physical, without control of the physical, that the mediation took my breath away, metaphorically. I have had an experience like that a couple times before, but this was completely out of the blue. I had intended a moving mediation, hence the music.

And I had a question, two actually but we will focus on the second for sake of condensing. My question was this, How does having no money serve me? Why is it a good thing.

The answer came from my pen, which was the only thing which moved and was later smoothed out by myself into this.

Money focuses your attention on the future always wanting the next thing. The goal here is to want the present.

I am a Gemini. I am always in my head. I am actually a Gemini Libra Libra so I am thrice the air sign. This means, to the layman, that I have a very hard time being grounded. I lived in my imagination as a child, and I still do a lesser or greater extent based on the day. It is me, my mind, my imagination, my dreams. I meditate and feel free boundless and bigger than galaxies. I could write you of these experiences and blow your mind with the exact feeling of being in space, of being space. It is my favorite mediation.

But lately I have begun to acknowledge we are here for a reason. We are physically manifested into the human condition for the sole purpose of being physical. This body, this world, these people, sex, food, action, emotion, it is all for a reason. We are meant to be here. We are meant to live like this, there is purpose in being in a body. You can experience things from this perspective like you couldn’t if you existed as a gas or a light or an idea. And I want you to take it this one step further, if you are still with me.

Being a physical part of the world doesn’t mean everyone incarnated here is a person. It means we are living in a stew of spiritual beings gone corporeal, the very plants we enjoy, the animals obviously, the rocks, the water, the cells in your body, and even the air we breath are all manifested here for the purpose of being corporeal too. Even the space we sit in is a perfect mass of expanded life. We are always living in the physical world full of spirit.

And so to close, I want you to enjoy the world. Feel the body. Live the experiences you encounter. Meditation is one thing, dreams and ideas and the past and the future are all well and grand but the world is where we live. We are here to feel it. So feel it. Right here and now.

And when there is love expand into it and feel it make you lighter, more like spirit, non-corporeal and let the contrast enlighten you.

Not just to lose it, but as if in physical altercation, locked and straining to wrestle it into what I want it to be. I have been struggling WITH my weight, as if it were another person I must contend with. A very contrary person who exists just to torment me and hold me back.

I have used spiritual means to exact the desired end. I have meditated, chanted, done spirit journeys and tarot readings. I have delved into my painful childhood and held the bereaved child me. I have acknowledged the weight as my assistant, my protector, my body’s way of speaking to me, as pain held in my body unhealed. I have done it all, in aid of losing this creature who makes me not as I feel myself to be but as a grotesque caricature of myself. I have done it all because I want that creature gone.

Yesterday I was on the train. The subway car window across from me was darkened by the tunnels we traveled through and alas the creature that is my weight was very visible. I was horrified. My arms were the worst of it. My hips the next glaring thing.

And I couldn’t help but feel the disorientation.

In my dreams, my mind, my astral wanderings I am not that girl. Am myself and I am … Normal. Not overly thin, or too thick for my aesthetic preference, but normal. I stared at her, this imposter of me, and just felt defeat. And then a man skinnier than me took up that spot and I felt even worse, seeing the reflection of me out shadowing even him.

Once, a while ago, a girl took me into the bathroom and told me to stare into the mirror. This was before my spiritual journey and she was intense and alarmingly so. It didn’t turn out well between us, I wasn’t ready I don’t think, but she and that incident still affects me today.

She said I was to stare in the mirror and tell myself I loved me.

Tell my reflection I love her.

Tell that … Thing in the mirror I love you.

Then, I couldn’t do it. I tried but there were too many distractions, too much going on. And I wasn’t near ready. I do recall the trembling. It made me tremble to imagine doing, before I even tried, this trembling feeling deep inside in the core of me. And when I tried it was with half hearted effort, and less understanding than I hold now. And when I looked into my reflection’s face, her eyes turned sad and she looked more child-like than ever. And I felt such .. Disgust. As if in her vulnerability she was akin to dirty and should be rejected.

That girl who forced me to do that, I ran as far away from her as I could get.

Ironically her name was Angel.

But that in incident in my head stands out so strongly. I feel as if sometimes a part of me lives in that bathroom, a public one with women rushing in and out and staring, and my ex/girlfriend huffing jealous over the girl in question. And the girl, Angel too close to my arm, insistent in word and will, that I see something. Something in the mirror. Something in me.

Since then I have tried in on my own, in private, by myself. It took a long time to work up the courage, its been 18 months since that day. I have stared at myself in the mirror and tried to see what she saw, 3 times. Every time I feel the same. As I look at her, the girl in the mirror who is my reflection, there is this pulling in her eyes. She wants so desperately to be loved, it is a literal drag on my energy to feed her. I feel drained looking into her eyes. She is so .. Bruised by life. And her pain begins to become mine. And I feel such anger at her for being so weak I just hate her. And invariably I give up and leave trying to forget why.

She is not me. She isn’t. Myself from this vantage point looking out is so beautiful. And I do love her. And I know myself so much better than I did then. And I feel so whole inside. The dichotomy is this shell I wear, this body, this weight, this reflection in the mirror. She feels so alien. So separate. So apart from me. Looking into the mirror feels as far away from understanding her as looking at a picture and trying to know that person from it. I feel disconnected when I look in the mirror.

But I must acknowledge a few things. The first being a truth I believe in. That what I believe is reflected in my reality. And the second being I feel the First Noble Truth of Buddhism applies here, somehow.

There is suffering. Suffering should be understood.

I really feel the second insight is key but I have tried to understand it. I have tried. I simply don’t. Understanding it, in this way as done by Buddhists, is to embrace it. Welcome it. Become it.

My pain is so great I feel it would overwhelm me were I to become it. I fear I would be lost.

It helps to imagine another as the source of attention. I would say another person, whose size is equal to mine, is starving. They are so hungry all they can do is eat. And the food piles up on their body but does not feed what is really hungry inside. I think it is their spirit which is the hungry one.

I remember being younger and always feeling hungry. This was long after I had rejected feeling hungry physically and made sure I wouldn’t feel my stomach sour and growling ever. Then the feeling of hunger moved, and became an internal thing. It became not a physical sensation this hunger but a felt thing like emotion. Indeed it feels like a pulling sensation. I have felt it often throughout my life I now see: For things. For people. For love. For sex. For change.

My mind expands with this insight. Feeding is not just about food, although I admit this idea is what sparked my turning vegetarian years ago as well as my spiritual path. We eat to become more than we are. Food fuels us, but so does poetry. Stories. Love. Laughter. Happiness. Joy. Fear even, just go see a scary movie and you’ll see yourself react in one way or the other. We are fueled by so many things. We hunger for so much.

Right now my main hunger is aesthetics. I am putting a lot of time in my physical appearance, mainly my hair. I hunger to make myself look beautiful. I am beautiful I acknowledge but these days I want to look a certain way. A way that feels more like myself. It is almost similar to this struggle with weight. I want my insides and outsides to match. I want them to match and be beautiful, beautiful to me that is. I hunger so much to look a certain way.

It makes me wonder if that is how a transgender person feels? So hungry for their shell to match their soul.

I buy things which feel like me. Make me feel even more like myself. I read things that do this as well. I am attracted to people who make me feel more like me. I feed myself all these things in aid of … What? Is it expansion? Connection. Do I feel too small and separate a drop in the universe that I must reach for reintegration? What exactly is it I am so god damn hungry for?

Is it god?

And if it is, well I believe I am god, we all are. That god and universe and people are one. If it is god I am hungry for, how can I really feed myself me?

If it is god I am hungry for, must I wait until this corporal existence ends to be free and whole again?

Inside I feel such pain. I don’t know why nor where it comes from, but it manifests in this strange urge to eschew company. I haven’t spent much time around anyone in months. The days stretch long and open, I wake when I wish, sleep when its needed, eat for pleasure not routine. My life revolves around three solid things, my healing, distractions, and love.

This love is novel. I remain unfamiliar with this type of love. It is unique in that it is singular to me. I am the only recipient. I am the only source. I am in control of its generation. I bask in the flow. And this is my joy and regret.

I feel joy I have learned this, it is almost a new skill. It is almost a new dawn in my life. But I also miss being loved by another. I miss it.

This missing drives me to peruse online profiles but this habit has become a source of pain for me. I peruse and it gets stronger and stronger in my chest, a feeling of unease so great it feels like a stone covers my heart center…

And I am alone again.

I close the application and I am able to breathe through the pain. I have learned not to fight it. Pain exists. And it has just as much a right to exist as anything. It even has a purpose. But it doesn’t feel nice to cry and not know why. To poke around inside my head, berate my psyche, interrogate the evasive me, this is futile for I feel I have gotten somewhere …

… and I turn around the next day to discover I have only gone in circles. I am enough for myself and that is it. I only have myself and that is it.

And I am both content and ill content with that.

I would love to have dates, so I say this. Then it becomes untrue. This wretched thing come up, overcomes me it, and I find I am fighting fear more frightening that any first date. Why. Why can I not move on and get on with it. It feels like my life is on hold waiting for itself to begin. It feels like love, the concept of it sung in song and tale, seeps away into the cracks between memories.

Soon it will be gone I think. Loving her was so distinct but now it fades. And I am left alone.

I am reminded of last loves. The strong ones, the ones worth the bitter ends they became.

She remains a hollow in my memory, a holy thing, a fragile love. And so much anger builds behind it, for I am forced to think of the good times with the bad. After all she did not treat me with courtesy. I didn’t know it then but I know it now. I treat myself now as she should have done and wish I had known better. If I had known how to treat myself then she would have known how to treat me.

And the anger fades. I take responsibility back and it fades and I am grateful for the lesson learned. And I miss her a bit more with the knowledge.

I cannot be with anyone yet, because the pain is still too great even now. She does hold that place, it’s been a year. But I cannot let go so another could claim it. I cannot let go. I am afraid to let go. I fear unlearning the love I hold now. I fear unloving myself when I lose the love of her. I fear being alone with a lonely me instead of one eschewing company. It is almost better to pine than it is to be loved.

So randomly I found myself downloading Twitter of all things. I suppose I just felt the need to get back in touch with the world. I’ve sorta eschewed social media for the last six months. It’s better this way I figure, these people aren’t my real friends. Real friends call and visit and care and stuff. Why should I post shit for them to see when they are just … Fake. Facebook is not a place for real friends I’ve found. Once they get you friended they fade into this background wall of plural-ness. I’m reminded of the worms Urusla turned the merpeople into. Plus my ex is on Facebook and she … Is a source of great thrill and anxiety for me. Whatever I digress.

Um, I found myself on Twitter and in the course of setting it up I synced my contacts.

Yours was the only one which I might have been interested in, I hesitated knowing I wouldn’t be serious in anything like a permanent follow. Damn. The idea of a request for that was so daunting I couldn’t even think about it. And last minute I was drawn to click the little picture. The one of your car.

Which I was suprised to see was the only thing I could see. Damn. You’d blocked me. And on a site I never even used. That’s commitment. I hate to see my old facebook then. You know the one I never use which you never unfriended me on, not for years after that whole debacle.

I stared at your car, beloved old thing. And felt my heart crack and bleed for the first time in ages. I didn’t realize it had been hardened like stone until that moment. Now I felt something strong there for the first time. Pain. Like betrayal and surprise and that moist feeling in your throat before you cry.

Damn.

I don’t think I’I’ve felt that hurt in a while. All that time, I knew you never blocked me once. I sorta built up in my head this paragon of kindness, who didn’t deserve what I put him through. Who suffered it with unwavering aplomb and elegant demeanour. Smh.

I tried to put myself down again, like usual, automatically imagining the event from your point of view, which really made me color myself horribly, like a grotesque version of me as both villian and resident crazy, … but this time I stopped. I realize I’ve changed a lot since then. I might still feel shame for my actions, but I can’t feel guilt anymore. In fact the more I write the more it fades. I rationalize now in kind with new beliefs. We both did agree to bring out in each other what happened. And me, I was more broken than I ever knew. But it wasn’t wrong. It was … Perhaps the darkest time in my life. The darkest I’ve ever sunk to. Perhaps what they mean when they say ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.

I worry if it gets worse than that.

However even my newfound peace and forgiveness does recognize a pattern. My closest relationships end inevitably with someone blocking me, and usually me them. Oh the wonders of social media.

I used to write you and apologize. Wallow in my guilt and wail it all out upon the ears I remember being so … Willing. What you gave me, can never be replaced. Regardless of anything you or I ever did, you gave me acceptance, for the first time. You gave me support. And there was, I don’t know if you remember, but I felt for the first time, some admiration come my way. Way back before things went sour I mean. If it weren’t for you I would have never survived my relationships after. Maybe even my life after.

Thank you so much for that.

And I realize now something else. Those other relationships, all of them, even with my family … They all gave me something. Even my ex who hurt me worst of all, loved me best. I was thinking of her today, missing her as a person. And then laughing at myself for forgetting how horribly she treated me. And still having to force myself to recall each and every moment of ill treatment to keep the picture of her balanced, to keep myself from swinging into a pining mood.

I realize now it doesn’t matter how she treated me. The memories of love linger more strongly. And of you, even stronger than my own actions, the first spark of pure unadultered friendship. My family, my mother, might hurt more to think on and delve into but I’m sure there is a lot she gave I don’t want to acknowledge right now out of anger. And that is okay too.

In fact. Let me offer something back to you, X. Let me help you as you once did me.